The Tower
The endless mode of Cardinal Quest 2. Here your character will endure a multitude of enemies while ascending floor after floor and beating bosses. Floors *All the normal floors are randomly generated to be either the forest, the town from Act 1, the castle from Act 1, the Monastery, the Spider Nest, or the Cavern from Act 2. *Every 4 floors, the player will face a Tower-exclusive boss. The layout of the boss rooms for most bosses can be almost the same as Xiatol's boss room with lava pits, while some bosses have unique layouts. *Note that bosses will always drop a piece of gear that is usually enchanted, as well as a tower key. *Scavengers appear 2 floors before every boss. *Legendary items can be found in the tower, but they are difficult to come by. Though legendary consumibles can still be made using the alchemist’s craft ability. Tiers *Every 20 floors in the tower is a tier (eg. Floor 1 to floor 20 is the 1st tier, floor 21 to floor 40 is the second, etc). Tiers loosely repeat the previous order of enemies from weakest to strongest. There is a scavenger on every 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th and 18th floor of each tier, and a boss on every 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 20th! There are 5 bosses and 5 scavengers per tier. *'Each new tier will grant enemies increased stats': Damage, health, speed, lowered skill cooldowns and increased awareness (which increases enemies vision range, and their chance to detect you, occasionally enemies will even detect you when they can't see you). They also gain 1 additional magic resistance per tier, which makes things difficult for wizards, or any magic focused builds, once enemies reach 9 magic resistance. Enemies will have max magic resistance even when the Wizard talent Willpower is maxed out. *Regular enemies also get a glowing aura after floor 20. It will be the same colour as the bosses had in the previous tier. Floor 21-40 is purple, floor 41-60 is orange, floor 61-80 is red, 81-100 is pink, 101+ switches from red and pink every other tier. *Upon entering a new tier, you will receive a free talent point and your skill tree will be "upgraded," giving some passives and certain class skills an extra rank. *Equipment will gain increased enchantment stats based on what tier you're in, such as a +1 vicious weapon being found in tier 1. These items become more common in higher tiers. *The higher your tier, the more enemies and chests appear in each map. *Unlike the elemental pact of a scavenger, summoned allies (such as wisps or elementals) with abilities or a scroll will not correspond to their teir, making them almost useless in floors past 60 *Expanding on the previous point, consumables such as the chakran or powder bomb also do not scale with any tier and will always deal the same amount of damage Difficulty *You start with the same base stats as in normal mode. *In the Tower, you require more experience to level, so leveling up is slower. Skills that require experience recharge faster. *Early boss floors frequently have a difficult enemy that's harder than the boss itself, such as floor 4 having an ogre when you're only level 2. *Enemy magic and projectile attacks do more damage than usual in the Tower, especially at higher floors. *Enemy magic cooldown is reduced the higher the tier, certain enemies such as the scavenger can summon elementals at a rate that can fill a small room, with other enemies such as elementals being able to perpetually mirror themselves. *Floors 25+ is considered harder than suicide mode. Floors 45+ is generally hell. Getting to floor 70+ and further is generally impossible without some incredible luck or the utilization of stealth and backstabs. *Attacking scavengers will make surviving harder in the long run. Scavengers have 3 stages of aggro, and subsequent scavengers will progress a stage if a previous scavenger is attacked (even if you don't kill him) up to a maximum stage of 3. In stage 1, they will be neutral and offer standard prices. In stage 2, their prices will be raised considerably, and they won't trust you. In stage 3, scavengers will attack the player on sight, and be invisible until they get attack you or are stumbled into. When a tier is completed, scavengers will regress one stage, allowing one to buy from them again without the use of Charm. *As one ascends the tower, skills that require EXP to charge, such as the Alchemist's Craft/Construct, Heal, or Transfusion, will have a much longer cooldown. This is because the amount of EXP per floor is split among a larger number of enemies, thus requiring more enemy kills to get an adequate amount of EXP to use EXP-recharging skills. Notes *In versions before Patch 1.13, bushes in the Tower are bugged and don't give +2 stealth and -2 defense. *The music will loop through the act music tracks as one ascends the tower, in order of appearance in said acts. The track will change each floor after a boss is defeated (floors 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, etc). After the "Far Plane" theme from Act 3, the music will loop back to Act 1's and repeat this process. Category:Gameplay